Sunday, December 27, 2009

Only Shakespeare can be Shakespeare, but without you even Shakespeare can't be Shakespeare.

You are the stage manager at the Globe theater in London. Will has a premiere coming up in a week but no script, no props, and no hope. He's spending his time drinking and sleeping under the tables in the few local taverns that will still let him in. But the show must go on and it's up to you!

You start out with a simple quest. Will has lost the pages of the play all over the Globe and you need to find them and put them in order by opening night. After mastering collating you advance to the next level which adds the challenge of getting enough money to pay the actors. Creativity in obtaining money is highly rewarded. Morality is not. The longer you play the more challenges that get added. They include:
- knife fights,
- riots,
- fire bombing of the theater during a performance,
- food poisoning,
- A change of venue to the dungeon in the tower of London,
- Lawsuits and endless discussion by people claiming that Shakespeare isn't Shakespeare, but they are Shakespeare.

To finally beat the game you have to find the tavern where Will has spent all night drunkenly cutting up the latest script into individual words. You must to reassemble them into a play that is at least as good as the original.

There are expansion packs for each of his plays and ultimately a pack that lets you write your own Shakespeare play. If you can convince the game AI that Shakespeare wrote the play you win!